Review: 'The Adventure' from MyMiniFactory and Free League

The Adventure is a subscription from MyMiniFactory and Free League based on the Dragonbane RPG. It has 5e content, too, and 20+ printables. But is it worth it? 100% yes

Over the past year, I have gotten super into 3d printing. I've made so many miniatures for my D&D group, I've lost count, and I've started working on 3d dungeon terrain and maps for us to play in. It's incredible. One of the best resources for models I've found has been MyMiniFactory, and I have bought a lot of models from there from various sellers. So when they reached out and offered a free month of their new subscription called The Adventure, I jumped at the chance.

After really digging into the first month and moving into the second, here are my thoughts.

What is The Adventure?

Well, it's a 3D printing and TTRPG smorgasbord for $10 a month: "The Adventure is a subscription service offering exclusive Dragonbane STLs and unbeatable partner discounts through a loyalty program, as well as a monthly Loot Box of 20 STLs plus gaming essentials."

For those of you who don't know, Dragonbane is a new RPG published by Free League in 2023, and it's genuinely one of the best new games I've read in a long time. I love Free League, and they sent me a review copy of Dragonbane a while back. It's fantastic, and I will have a review of the system up eventually, but in the meantime, here's Austin's Dragonbane review on ScreenRant.

Free League is also the publisher of my beloved CY_BORG RPG, the Pirate Borg game I'm currently playing, and Vaesen, which I played last year for a while. They make incredibly fun games, which is a big selling point for this subscription for me.

The Adventure comes with a quick introduction to the Dragonbane setting and monthly quest (more about this a bit later), an exclusive set of 5 printable minis for the game called the Company of Adventurers that were modeled by Titan Forge, and an insane amount of 5e content and other printables. While the description says it's a "loot box of 20 STLs," there's actually a lot more than that because some of the individual items contain multiple models.

Here's a look at what my library looked like after the first month:

My personal favorite of this month is the adventure module called Doggos & Dragons. It's fantastic and fun and everything I love and tabletop games. The PDF is available for free, I believe. I am absolutely printing out a Bulldog Hydra and army of Dog Knights for my party to fight asap.

Additionally, Hit Point Press 4 separate dragon-themed supplements on Floral Dragons, and even though I've only had the chance to read through one of them, I can tell you right now that I am going to be incorporating a Dandelion Dragon into a game at some point.

I honestly haven't even had time to dig in on the Printed Legends module called Heart of Winter or Moonlight Minis' Night of the Nutcracker, but the models look incredible.

I should also mention that outside of the exclusive Dragonbane minis, all of the other items are available on MyMiniFactory to purchase even if you're not a subscriber. The prices range anywhere from $2.99 to $20 from what I've seen. So there's a lot of stuff in here if you plan on printing and using even a fraction of it (which I do).

Month 2 Contents

As I was drafting this write-up Month 2 started, and I already had my files in my library. I haven't received any of the other story-based Dragonbane content yet, but I did get the additional STL files, and I really like them.

I'm printing the Axolotl Wizard as I type this at 125% for a Dragonborn Sorcerer in my Lost Mine of Phandelver campaign. With it being a stylized mini, it's just perfect to represent Gorch.

You Get Discounts, Too

Subscribers also get a couple of discounts included, too. Each month, there's a big partner discount, and it might be for miniature or gaming accessories, 3d printing material deals, etc. Honestly, that's not a big thing for me because I am pretty set in my ways and don't buy stuff just because there's a discount available. Unless there's just something just truly spectacular over the course of the year, I probably won't make use of this perk. But hey, I have no idea what's coming up. I may eat my words.

However, you also get a 10% discount on the Dragonbane RPG on the Free League site, which is sweet since it's a great game. You definitely should buy it, regardless. What got me is the 10% storewide MMF discount that stacks with other discounts. I was buying STLs from MMF before I was contacted about The Adventure, so this is just icing on the cake. If you are like me and actually buy printables there already, The Adventure subscription might more than pay for itself.

What About the Dragonbane Content in The Adventure?

Okay, so here's where I am a little disappointed. I say that with the caveat that it's probably on me for misunderstanding what was being offered. Here's what the site says about it:

When joining The Adventure, you will receive 5 hero STLs sculpted by Titan Forge from Free League’s Dragonbane universe alongside a story teaser an introductory partner deal. Each month after that offers 1 monster STL, a story teaser and an unbeatable partner deal.

See how it says "story teaser" a couple times? I was thinking it would be a quick adventure encounter of some kind, especially since across the site it's called "The Quest."

I was thinking that since you got the Company of Heroes STL pack for the first month, you'd get a short encounter that would introduce these heroes and let the players meet them. Kind of set them up as characters that you could then use in a Dragonbane session or other RPG campaign. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case.

It was a brief, literal teaser of the encounter I had hoped for that basically boils down to "you see a party standing over near a quest board, and you make friends and join up." The story teaser is essentially the first paragraph or two that a GM reads as a campaign intro.

And that's fine, I guess. But with it being called "The Quest," I had expected more. Perhaps the other months will have that sort of encounter, but if so, the structure should be reworked to be a part of the first one subscribers get.

As it stands, I have no idea who Makander of Halfbay or Bastonn Bloodjaw are. I've printed the minis because they're amazing:

But right now they are "these really cool minis I have" and not something more meaningful and connected to the Dragonbane game outside of being races available. If I had my druthers, there'd be more story involved in The Adventure than there currently seems to be.

The Dragonbane Minis are Incredible

That said, I am very happy with the Dragonbane minis and how they print out. I don't have a resin printer, but I did recently buy a Bambu Labs A1 Mini. In terms of quality and speed, it's head-and-shoulders above the Elegoo Neptune 3 I've been working with. You can see in the image above just how great they are on an FDM printer with default settings. I can't wait to get the printer dialed in correctly to see what they look like when the settings are optimized.

Note: Even though Month 2 has started already, as of my writing this, the Dragonbane monster for month two hasn't been added to my library on MMF just yet, but I can't wait to see it, based on the art in the preview:

Is MyMiniFactory's 'The Adventure' Worth It?

I am not usually the kind of guy who buys into the "hundreds of dollars of stuff for only $10!" because most of the time, the majority of that stuff isn't used or isn't something I'd ever have bought myself. It's often just a marketing tactic.

Buuuuut...this time...maybe 85-90% of the stuff included in the first month of The Adventure is genuinely stuff I intend on printing and using because I look for and buy cool STLs all the time and now I have a backlog of them to print and paint.

The lack of an RPG element for their Dragonbane connection is, as I said above, disappointing. But MyMiniFactory isn't a roleplaying game site. It's a 3d printing site that happens to have some RPG adventures and modules to supplement the minis, not the other way around.

So while MyMiniFactory was amazing enough to provide me with a free first month's subscription to The Adventure, I made sure to maintain the subscription and paid for the next one myself. See? I put my money where my mouth is. It's really good.

This post originally appeared on Geek to Geek Media.